| --- Log opened Thu May 03 00:00:35 2012 |
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| 00:40 | | You're now known as TheWatcher[t-2] |
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| 02:07 | <@ToxicFrog> | mail is working again \o/ |
| 02:07 | <@Tamber> | \o/ |
| 02:07 | <@Tamber> | Thirty seconds later: "Sendmail ate it all! <o>" |
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| 02:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | Oh my god |
| 02:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | I don't know how this happened, but somehow it's fallen back to the old X11 cursors |
| 02:16 | <@Tamber> | ? |
| 02:16 | <@Tamber> | o.o |
| 02:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | Like the little wristwatch "busy" cursor |
| 02:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | :3 |
| 02:17 | <@Tamber> | Hehe |
| 02:33 | <&McMartin> | http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table/ |
| 02:33 | <&McMartin> | Kinda neat |
| 02:39 | < Namegduf> | It's crawling up pretty slowly. :( |
| 02:39 | < Namegduf> | It is going to need a last minute burst, I think. |
| 02:59 | <@ToxicFrog> | Er |
| 02:59 | <@ToxicFrog> | It's 75% of the way there and still has a month to go |
| 03:00 | <@ToxicFrog> | That's amazing |
| 03:00 | <@ToxicFrog> | Unless it's been up for four months already or something |
| 03:17 | <&McMartin> | Also, though this is admittedly more of local interest to me: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1683782982/snake-and-butterfly-chocolate-fac tory-and-lounge |
| 03:27 | | Noah [maoranma@Nightstar-93e1b6e0.pools.spcsdns.net] has joined #code |
| 03:29 | < Noah> | Ello |
| 03:32 | < Noah> | McMartin: You said MF0 is going to be creative commons, but does that mean publishing the rules online freely is okay? |
| 03:35 | < Noah> | I'm not incredibly familiar with the creative commons licencing, I've only looked at it a bit from my stint on deviantart |
| 03:41 | <&McMartin> | The full nature of it depends on the precise form |
| 03:41 | <&McMartin> | But generally, everyone can distribute it unmodified |
| 03:41 | <&McMartin> | The hooks are for derivative works, if any |
| 03:42 | <&McMartin> | Oh, also commercial purposes; if it's BY-NC then then you can publish it online freely but you can't charge for it |
| 03:42 | <&McMartin> | Hydorah, the space shooter I started playing yesterday, is BY-NC-ND; that is, Attribution Required, Non-Commercial Use Only, No Derivative Works. |
| 03:43 | <&McMartin> | By convention, walkthroughs, hint guids, and Let's Plays do not appear to be considered "derivative works" of a game. |
| 03:44 | < Noah> | I see |
| 03:44 | < Noah> | Well, I'm fraking excited |
| 03:45 | < Noah> | Gonna harass everyone locally to get into it |
| 03:45 | <&McMartin> | \o/ |
| 03:46 | < Noah> | Are there going to be rules for space combat? |
| 03:46 | < Noah> | Because I particularlly like making spaceships |
| 03:48 | < Noah> | Gotta dig my dice out too, lol It looks like I need 2d6 of White, red, blue, and gree, and 1d8 of red and green from what I've been able to make out from the previews and stuff |
| 03:49 | <&McMartin> | The combat model is, IIRC intended to be fairly generic |
| 03:50 | < Noah> | right, it feels a bit like Warmachine/Hordes in a way |
| 03:50 | < Noah> | I have a whole mess of Necrons, I should see about selling those off to get legos |
| 03:54 | <&Derakon> | Is Hydorah any good? |
| 03:55 | <&McMartin> | Derakon: I'm quite impressed, actually. |
| 03:55 | <&McMartin> | It's very "classic" |
| 03:55 | <&McMartin> | I'm only 3.5 levels in or so, but I already like it more than, say, Gradius V~ |
| 03:55 | <&Derakon> | I'm wa tching the trailer on YouTube and it seems competent, but it's easier to make good trailers than good games. |
| 03:56 | <&McMartin> | I'm getting a strong Darius Twin vibe, along with the Good Parts of Gradius. |
| 03:56 | <&Derakon> | Alas, appears to be Windows-only, judging from the singular Download link. |
| 03:58 | <&McMartin> | Yes, it uses the Iji/Spelunky engine. |
| 04:01 | | * Alek perks up. |
| 04:01 | <&McMartin> | Alek: http://www.locomalito.com/hydorah.php |
| 04:04 | < Alek> | yeah, downloading. <_< |
| 04:06 | <&McMartin> | >_> |
| 04:25 | <&McMartin> | Hm. |
| 04:26 | <&McMartin> | I should start cleaning up my OCRemix spider tools. |
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| 04:36 | < Alek> | heh. nifty. |
| 04:36 | | * Alek will be spending months on this, he suspects. XD |
| 04:45 | < Noah> | Downloading...sloooowly |
| 04:48 | <&McMartin> | I'm not awake enough to play with any skill right now |
| 04:51 | <~Vornicus> | I always wanted an ocremix spider that added track number metadata |
| 04:51 | <~Vornicus> | because jesus shit |
| 04:52 | <&Derakon> | Track number? |
| 04:52 | <&Derakon> | You mean the OCRemix track ID? |
| 04:55 | <&McMartin> | Later uploads have them, but yes, that |
| 04:55 | <&McMartin> | However, since I'm making CDs for my car, I need to rename the files and organize them in directories for burnination. |
| 04:59 | < Alek> | tad confused, mind. what are blue arrows for? |
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| 05:59 | < Noah> | Fraking phone |
| 05:59 | < Noah> | SO |
| 05:59 | < Noah> | I have all my legos grouped up into similar blocks |
| 05:59 | < Noah> | Do I really want to make a spreadsheet to catalog all of my bricks |
| 06:00 | < Eri> | You should use RFID tracking |
| 06:00 | < Noah> | that would technically give each of my frames a unique RFID fingerprint |
| 06:00 | < Noah> | But no |
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| 06:39 | < maoranma> | Need something like Deckbox, but for legos |
| 06:43 | | Derakon is now known as Derakon[AFK] |
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| 07:39 | < maoranma> | http://goo.gl/EQV69 http://goo.gl/Erlsr http://goo.gl/iDJU5 http://goo.gl/DZFuB - McMartin |
| 07:39 | < maoranma> | Look what I made!~ |
| 07:41 | | Netsplit *.net <-> *.split quits: @Vornicus, Tarinaky, gnolam, @himi, ShellNinja, Rhamphoryncus, @McMartin, maoranma, @rms, froztbyte, (+2 more, use /NETSPLIT to show all of them) |
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| 07:43 | < maoranma> | Damn internet |
| 07:54 | < maoranma> | So it's got two very large guns, I'm going to assume they could be laser blasters of some sort, maybe a rail gun? Big radar dish for aiming, wheels for mobility, but it's probably pretty slow, and lots of flat blocks that I want to say are armor, making it nice and smooth |
| 07:55 | < maoranma> | And once I have a rulebook, I can tell you what it's stats are |
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| 08:08 | < maoranma> | Fixed that back window into a proper viewport |
| 08:09 | < maoranma> | It has a hatch, and because I used smooth pieces, it closes without having snap it in, making easy to open and close |
| 08:11 | < maoranma> | http://goo.gl/vCEE3 |
| 08:13 | | ToxicFrog [ToxicFrog@ServerAdministrator.Nightstar.Net] has quit [Operation timed out] |
| 08:14 | < maoranma> | And yes, that is a melon baller, which I've found to be remarkably useful to pulling out stubborn bricks without scratching |
| 08:15 | <&jerith> | Nice. |
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| 08:20 | < maoranma> | First product of Mao Motorvehicles and Mechas (M?)~ |
| 08:27 | < maoranma> | http://goo.gl/5mAzP |
| 08:28 | < maoranma> | I've got these two really cool curvy bits |
| 08:28 | < maoranma> | I'm thinking some kind of awesome spaceship |
| 08:35 | | * TheWatcher readsup |
| 08:39 | <@TheWatcher> | there's actually a special brick separator tool (part code 630) you can sometimes find (there's a grey and an orange or green version, the orange/green version is better for technic pieces, as it has a 1 length axle to help push axles out of pieces). Really worth getting if you ever run into one |
| 08:39 | < maoranma> | Cool, I'll keep an eye out for it |
| --- Log closed Thu May 03 08:51:53 2012 |
| --- Log opened Thu May 03 08:57:16 2012 |
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| 09:00 | < maoranma> | Anyway, time to get some sleep |
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| 13:51 | < Tarinaky> | How do I use fsck? |
| 13:51 | < Tarinaky> | I'd google but I have computer problems. |
| 13:52 | <@ToxicFrog> | Depends on what you want to do with it |
| 13:53 | < Tarinaky> | I dropped my laptop and the harddrive is upset with me. |
| 13:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | Ummmmm |
| 13:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | Ok, so, something to keep in mind here is that fsck's job is to preserve the integrity of the filesystem |
| 13:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | It can and will sacrifice large amounts of data to do that |
| 13:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | And if things are significantly damaged, it may have to |
| 13:55 | < Tarinaky> | Yes. |
| 13:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | So if there's stuff on that disk you want, the very first thing you should be doing is taking an image of the drive for later analysis. |
| 13:55 | < Tarinaky> | Nothing to back up. |
| 13:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | Assuming that's still possible. |
| 13:55 | < Tarinaky> | The laptop boots btw. |
| 13:56 | < Tarinaky> | It even starts x. |
| 13:56 | <@ToxicFrog> | There's a "but" in there |
| 13:56 | < Tarinaky> | But it does so slowly, with lots of errors. |
| 13:56 | < Tarinaky> | And some software obviously needs reinstalling. |
| 13:57 | < Tarinaky> | Ideally in a part of the harddrive that isn't damaged~ |
| 13:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | Anyways. The short answer is to use 'man fsck', and 'man fsck.<filesystem>' for the fs-specific version (eg 'man fsck.ext2') |
| 13:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | Ok |
| 13:57 | < Tarinaky> | I need / to be ro though... |
| 13:57 | < Tarinaky> | Which it won't be, because it's 'busy'. |
| 13:58 | <@ToxicFrog> | I kind of assumed you'd be booting a livesystem for this |
| 13:58 | < Tarinaky> | I don't have anything to boot from. |
| 13:58 | < Tarinaky> | No cd-drive. |
| 13:59 | <@ToxicFrog> | No USB? No card reader? |
| 13:59 | < Tarinaky> | I have usb ports. |
| 13:59 | < Tarinaky> | That doesn't mean I have anything to put into those ports. |
| 13:59 | <@ToxicFrog> | welp |
| 13:59 | <@ToxicFrog> | Ok, you have two options here, pretty much |
| 14:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | Actually, backing up |
| 14:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | What you need to do here is both fsck (check filesystem consistency) and badblocks (check for bad sectors) |
| 14:02 | < Tarinaky> | I think the problem is hardware since the errors I'm getting make direct reference to ATA |
| 14:02 | <@ToxicFrog> | Well, yes, you dropped it, you'll be lucky if none of the rw heads have been smashed |
| 14:03 | <@ToxicFrog> | And you will probably need to replace the drive soon |
| 14:03 | <@ToxicFrog> | I'm approaching this from the perspective of "I need to salvage a usable system from this that can limp along until the drive is replaced" |
| 14:03 | < Tarinaky> | Yes. |
| 14:04 | <@ToxicFrog> | So. You need a fsck and a badblocks. |
| 14:04 | <@ToxicFrog> | badblocks will map the regions of the drive that are no longer accessible and mark them so that the filesystem avoids using them. |
| 14:04 | < Tarinaky> | I meant I don't think the filesystem is actually broken since I've had no errors relating, specifically, to the filesystem. |
| 14:04 | <@ToxicFrog> | In doing so it may also trigger the drive's internal recovery mechanisms, if any. |
| 14:05 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yeah, but it's something you want to check anyways (what if one of the bad sectors contained an inode?) and the easiest way to run badblocks is as part of fsck anyways |
| 14:05 | <@ToxicFrog> | What distro is this? |
| 14:06 | < Tarinaky> | Arch. |
| 14:06 | < Tarinaky> | Any idea how I can run badblocks given I only have one storage device? |
| 14:07 | < Tarinaky> | It says it can't be used if it's mounted readonly. |
| 14:07 | < Tarinaky> | Which is a problem. |
| 14:08 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yes, actually. |
| 14:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | The typical approach is to use a livesystem, which - in the absence of media to boot one from - you can do by plopping the livesystem's kernel and initrd into /boot (along with any other files it needs) and then loading that via grub. I find this very useful on occasion and all of my systems have a TinyCore install in /boot just in case. |
| 14:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | A less capable but faster alternative (that doesn't require being able to download and store things in /boot) is just to boot with the 'root=/dev/nosuchdevice' option, which should cause it to go "can't find the root filesystem!" and drop you into an in-memory recovery shell from which you can run fsck. |
| 14:10 | <@ToxicFrog> | I assume you're using ext2/3/4 here? |
| 14:10 | < Tarinaky> | And badblocks? |
| 14:10 | < Tarinaky> | ext3 iirc |
| 14:10 | <@ToxicFrog> | Running badblocks manually is bad news bears, it's very easy to get wrong |
| 14:11 | < Tarinaky> | Ah, fsck will invoke badblocks on its own? |
| 14:11 | <@ToxicFrog> | What you want to do is run fsck with the '-c' option (or '-c -c', which will use a more thorough test), which will cause it to invoke badblocks itself |
| 14:11 | <@ToxicFrog> | You can check what fs you're using with the 'mount' command |
| 14:11 | < Tarinaky> | Right. And the recovery shell has its own copy of both these utilities? |
| 14:11 | <@ToxicFrog> | /dev/md0 on / type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=continue,user_xattr,acl,commit=5,barrier=1,data=ordered) |
| 14:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | That's OS-dependent but it should, yes |
| 14:12 | < Tarinaky> | ext4, my bad. |
| 14:12 | < Tarinaky> | Okay. |
| 14:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | pretty sure fsck.ext4 accepts the same options |
| 14:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | (it may actually be fsck.ext2 under the hood) |
| 14:12 | < Tarinaky> | So. What's the full invocation of fsck I need... |
| 14:13 | < Tarinaky> | (Since I won't have man) |
| 14:13 | < Tarinaky> | fsck -rccC /dev/sda2 ? |
| 14:14 | <@ToxicFrog> | fsck -C -p -f -c -c /dev/foo |
| 14:14 | < Tarinaky> | Right. Do I invoke it on the partitions or the harddisk? |
| 14:14 | <@ToxicFrog> | Or replace -p with -r for interactive mode - this is safer but may result in it asking you thousands of questions and is thus not always practical |
| 14:15 | < Tarinaky> | Anything else before I go? |
| 14:15 | <@ToxicFrog> | (to break it down, -C displays progress information, -p "autopreens", ie, tries to repair it automatically in the most sensible way, -f forces it to check even if the fs has been checked recently, and -c -c tells it to check for bad blocks using a nondestructive read-write test) |
| 14:15 | <@ToxicFrog> | Run it on the partitions, not the whole disk |
| 14:16 | < Tarinaky> | Cool. |
| 14:16 | < Tarinaky> | If you don't hear from me it failed and I'm trapped inside Linux. |
| 14:16 | < Tarinaky> | Send help ;p |
| 14:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | Sure you don't want to download tinycore first or something? |
| 14:17 | < Tarinaky> | Not really. |
| 14:17 | < Tarinaky> | Particularly if the utilities I need are already inside the kernel. |
| 14:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | They're inside the initrd, actually |
| 14:17 | < Tarinaky> | Ahah. |
| 14:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | In addition to init itself, filesystem drivers, and whatnot, the initrd usually includes a minimal set of recovery tools |
| 14:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | including fsck.*, badblocks, and mdadm |
| 14:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | And I meant more "in case fsck erases /etc/passwd and leaves you unable to login"~ |
| 14:33 | < Tarinaky> | Yeah. initrd doesn't include fsck for me. |
| 14:33 | <@ToxicFrog> | o.O |
| 14:33 | < Tarinaky> | When I attempted to reboot it then decided that now would be a great time to do an automated recovery. |
| 14:33 | <@ToxicFrog> | It dropped you into the recovery shell but neither /bin/fsck nor /sbin/fsck existed? |
| 14:34 | < Tarinaky> | So now it's marked the disk as containing errors. |
| 14:34 | < Tarinaky> | (no shit!) |
| 14:34 | < Tarinaky> | I didn't check /bin or /sbin... just fs<tab> |
| 14:34 | < Tarinaky> | Also: How do I show that a sequence is monotonically increasing/decreasing? |
| 14:35 | <@ToxicFrog> | Ask Vorn~ |
| 14:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | And, ok, it should have said something like "filesystem contains errors, do xyz to fix" |
| 14:36 | < Tarinaky> | Run fsck manually... |
| 14:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | Aah. |
| 14:36 | < Tarinaky> | Which I did. |
| 14:36 | < Tarinaky> | Except it needs to run badblocks so it failed. |
| 14:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | er |
| 14:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | what?> |
| 14:36 | < Tarinaky> | Well, it gives an error about a block returning 'short'. |
| 14:37 | <@ToxicFrog> | What is the actual error, and was this in the initrd or in the main system? |
| 14:37 | < Tarinaky> | Which error? |
| 14:37 | <@ToxicFrog> | The one you just mentioned! |
| 14:37 | < Tarinaky> | Let me go run it again. |
| 14:38 | <@ToxicFrog> | And please answer the other question as well! |
| 14:39 | < Tarinaky> | You only asked one question |
| 14:40 | < Tarinaky> | Right, I'm running fsck -p / |
| 14:41 | <@ToxicFrog> | <ToxicFrog> What is the actual error, and was this in the initrd or in the main system? |
| 14:41 | <@ToxicFrog> | Read the entire sentence >.< |
| 14:41 | < Tarinaky> | I asked which invocation of fsck you were inquiring about. |
| 14:41 | < Tarinaky> | The automatic one by initrd or when I use bash as my init to run it manually. |
| 14:43 | < Tarinaky> | When run automatically from init I get: "UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY: RUN fsck MANUALLY (ie without -a or -p options)" |
| 14:43 | < Tarinaky> | Let me run it in interactive mode to get that error, |
| 14:44 | < Tarinaky> | Right |
| 14:45 | < Tarinaky> | "Buffer I/O error on device sda2, logical block 524362 Error reading block 524362 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while getting next inode from scan. Ignore error<y>? |
| 14:45 | < Tarinaky> | " |
| 14:45 | < Tarinaky> | I then pressed n; because it seemed like the kind of error I really shouldn't ignore. |
| 14:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | Welp |
| 14:54 | <@ToxicFrog> | Honestly it would probably be faster to format it with the -c option and reinstall |
| 14:55 | < Tarinaky> | Except I don't have anything to reinstall from. |
| 14:57 | < Tarinaky> | I am displeased that I just spent over ?50 on a 5200rpm hard disk :/ |
| 15:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | How did you get it set up originaly? |
| 15:15 | < Tarinaky> | I switched dhcp off on my router and used my desktop as a netboot server. |
| 15:15 | < Tarinaky> | I don't own the routers at college or have the ability to turn dhcp off for an afternoon. |
| 15:15 | < Tarinaky> | Even if I did I imagine I'd be shot for doing so :) |
| 15:16 | < Tarinaky> | Also: maths dept. y u no have advisory like the comp sci dept. do :( |
| 15:17 | < Tarinaky> | I'm struggling with analysis revision so much :( |
| 15:18 | < Tarinaky> | Primarily because there are no solutions to the past papers |
| 15:18 | < Tarinaky> | So I have no idea if I'm revising the right answers or wrong ones. |
| 15:32 | <@ToxicFrog> | Blargh :/ |
| 15:32 | <@ToxicFrog> | I would highly recommend investing in a ?5 USB stick, as it makes system recovery and installation much easier, but that doesn't really help you right now. |
| 15:32 | < Tarinaky> | I have one ordered. |
| 15:33 | < Tarinaky> | I also have a replacement harddrive ordered. |
| 15:33 | <@ToxicFrog> | You may end up having to tell it to just ignore the read errors. |
| 15:33 | < Tarinaky> | I hope they arrive at the same time. |
| 15:33 | < Tarinaky> | Ideally I'd like to be able to copy the old harddisk onto the new one and reinstall from that. |
| 15:34 | < Tarinaky> | Because it's easier than dicking around with "To install netdrivers you need net, to get net you need netdrivers" |
| 15:38 | <@ToxicFrog> | Doesn't arch have a livesystem netinstall you can use or something? |
| 15:38 | < Tarinaky> | Yes. But it requires access to the internet. |
| 15:38 | < Tarinaky> | Access to the internet requires wireless drivers. |
| 15:39 | < Tarinaky> | Installing wireless drivers (which for my system are not part of the default iso because it involves binary firmware) requires internet. |
| 15:39 | < Tarinaky> | CIRCULAR DEPENDANCY GO! |
| 15:40 | <@Tamber> | Ran into that issue with my USB wireless adapter; partially solved it by having the binary firmware on my pendrive. Of course, that would involve having a machine to grab the firmware from... :x |
| 15:43 | <@ToxicFrog> | Oh |
| 15:44 | < Tarinaky> | Wired networking with my laptop has been made as difficult as possible by the Ministry of Information Services. |
| 15:45 | < Tarinaky> | Can't remember the Dilbertism. |
| 15:47 | < froztbyte> | there's a few applicable ones |
| 15:49 | < Tarinaky> | Meh. |
| 15:50 | < Tarinaky> | I'll settle for rogue Tuttles; disillusioned by the lack of excitement and adventure in bureaucracy. |
| 15:51 | < Tarinaky> | "Why, we can't even leave without a 27B-6." |
| 15:51 | <@Tamber> | Mordac the Preventer of Information Services! |
| 15:51 | < Tarinaky> | That's the one! |
| 15:52 | < Tarinaky> | Damnit, I have the theme from Brazil stuck in my head now :/ |
| 15:58 | | celticminstrel [celticminst@Nightstar-5d22ab1d.cable.rogers.com] has joined #code |
| 16:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | Tarinaky: what've they done that makes it such a pain? |
| 16:50 | < Tarinaky> | Limits on the number of mac addresses you can have registered to the account you need to log in with wpa2 encryption... |
| 16:51 | < Tarinaky> | Part of their plan to stop viruses and p2p etc... is to give everyone a maximum of 20 ports open. |
| 16:51 | < Tarinaky> | Which means the only form of entertainment I have is pirating TV shows :p |
| 16:52 | < Tarinaky> | Supereffective. |
| 16:56 | < Tarinaky> | Part of what screws me over even more though is that Maths awards a disproportionate amount of marks for attendance rather than work. |
| 16:56 | < Tarinaky> | And I am terrible at such things,. |
| 16:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | er |
| 16:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | I mean, why can't you just plug the laptop into the wall |
| 16:57 | < Tarinaky> | Firstly, there's a shortage of spare sockets. Secondly, because the MAC address isn't registered as being 'me'. |
| 16:58 | < Tarinaky> | I should go home. |
| 16:58 | < Tarinaky> | Remmon will start shouting at me at 1800 |
| 16:58 | < Tarinaky> | Laters. |
| 16:59 | < Noah> | o/ |
| 17:12 | | ShellNinja [abudhabi@Nightstar-7b2d96ca.adsl.inetia.pl] has quit [Z-Lined: Your IP range has been attempting to connect too many times in too short a duration. Wait a while, and you will be able to connect.] |
| 17:22 | | ShellNinja [abudhabi@Nightstar-7b2d96ca.adsl.inetia.pl] has joined #code |
| 17:26 | < Tarinaky> | Home! |
| 17:55 | < froztbyte> | <_habnabit> http://ompldr.org/vZGxxaQ php: still owns |
| 17:55 | < froztbyte> | that'd make an awesome t-shirt |
| 17:56 | <@Tamber> | There's a typo there. |
| 17:56 | <@Tamber> | s/owns/owned/ :D |
| 17:56 | < froztbyte> | no, that's exactly it |
| 17:57 | < froztbyte> | you can still use php to pwn boxes :P |
| 17:57 | < Noah> | Sigh. PHP. |
| 17:57 | <@Tamber> | hehe |
| 17:57 | <@Tamber> | I'll be happy when I can just throw the damned remote-shell out~ |
| 17:57 | < Noah> | PHP: Why are you so bad and people still use you. |
| 17:58 | <@Tamber> | Because they don't know any better. |
| 17:58 | <@Tamber> | Alternatively, because *you* try find dirt-cheap hosting that's even /heard/ of anything other than PHP :p |
| 17:58 | < froztbyte> | the only reason PHP is popular is hysterical raisins |
| 17:59 | < froztbyte> | there's no technical worth to it that isn't infinitely eclipsed by other things |
| 17:59 | < froztbyte> | well, no |
| 17:59 | < froztbyte> | there's one |
| 17:59 | < froztbyte> | "how not to do it" |
| 17:59 | <@Tamber> | hehe |
| 18:00 | | ShellNinja is now known as Number3 |
| 18:02 | <@Tamber> | Thankfully, nothing /I'm/ running has that bug (At least, not that I can find with gentle testing.); at the very least, that gives me some more time to replace it. |
| 18:02 | | You're now known as TheWatcher |
| 18:02 | <@Tamber> | "We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem." 'apt-get purge php' |
| 18:04 | <@TheWatcher> | Well, use mod_php rather than mod_phpcgi is a start. |
| 18:04 | <@TheWatcher> | Or mod_cgid, etc |
| 18:06 | <@TheWatcher> | ie: avoid using php via a cgi mechanism. |
| 18:07 | <&jerith> | CGI should be avoided for everything, everywhere, always. |
| 18:24 | | Tarinaky is now known as Atreus |
| 19:02 | | ErikMesoy [Erik_Mesoy@A08927.B4421D.B81A91.464BAB] has joined #code |
| 19:14 | | Rhamphoryncus [rhamph@Nightstar-5697f7e2.abhsia.telus.net] has joined #code |
| 19:16 | | Noah [maoranma@Nightstar-79ebb56b.pools.spcsdns.net] has quit [Ping timeout: 121 seconds] |
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| 19:20 | | mode/#code [+o eckse] by ChanServ |
| 19:22 | < Rhamphoryncus> | float fFrustumScale = 1.0f; float fzNear = 0.5f; float fzFar = 3.0f; |
| 19:22 | <@Tamber> | FrustrationScale? |
| 19:22 | < Rhamphoryncus> | not edited by me. That's an actual single line from the opengl tutorial |
| 19:22 | < Rhamphoryncus> | "single line" being the key part |
| 19:22 | <@Tamber> | Ick. |
| 19:23 | < Rhamphoryncus> | "Huh, I don't see fzFar declared in the function.. nor globally.. *searches* ugh.." |
| 19:25 | <@Tamber> | Also, the Bad Hungarian Notation. :x |
| 19:25 | <@TheWatcher> | Hungarian Notation: A hovercraft full of eels >.< |
| 19:27 | < Rhamphoryncus> | Uhuh. Of course that's just systems hungarian. Application hungarian actually has uses |
| 19:42 | < gnolam> | TheWatcher: a pCHovercraft full of m_aEels :P |
| 19:44 | < Rhamphoryncus> | yay math! Add a perspective matrix, get.. nothing |
| 19:44 | < gnolam> | Receive bacon. |
| 19:45 | <&jerith> | Anyone here remember Mirell? |
| 19:45 | < gnolam> | Yep. |
| 19:45 | <&jerith> | (Answering "yes" to that dates you, by the way.) |
| 19:45 | < gnolam> | And his... interesting... piercings. |
| 19:45 | <&jerith> | Quite. |
| 19:46 | <&jerith> | I ran into him in #riak on freenode when I was trying to sort out an issue I was having. |
| 19:46 | <&jerith> | Turns out he works for Basho now. |
| 19:51 | | Noah [maoranma@Nightstar-79ebb56b.pools.spcsdns.net] has joined #code |
| 19:52 | < gnolam> | Oh? |
| 19:55 | < Rhamphoryncus> | Ahh, there we go. Got something draw again |
| 19:55 | | maoranma [maoranma@Nightstar-e297690c.tn.comcast.net] has joined #code |
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| 20:15 | | EvilDarkLord [jjlehto3@Nightstar-a5db08cc.org.aalto.fi] has joined #code |
| 20:15 | < EvilDarkLord> | Anyone tried A Valley Without Wind? I am considering getting it since I liked AI War. |
| 20:16 | <&jerith> | EvilDarkLord: I've been playing it since early beta. |
| 20:16 | <&jerith> | I like it. |
| 20:16 | <&jerith> | Grab the demo, see if you like it, but a license if you want. |
| 20:17 | <&jerith> | (I like seeing Arcen Games get money, because they're Good People and have a very open development process.) |
| 20:17 | < EvilDarkLord> | The replayability / difficulty scaling is good then? I am asking mostly about this since this is something that is difficult to judge in a limited demo. |
| 20:17 | <&jerith> | There are two kind of progression. |
| 20:18 | <&jerith> | Each continent requires you to start with only a handful of very basic spells and work your way up to the point where you can take out the Overlord. |
| 20:18 | <&jerith> | Then there are global unlocks and enchants and things that ramp up a lot more slowly and don't reset between continents. |
| 20:20 | <&jerith> | They're adding new stuff all the time, so unless you're playing hard, fast and constantly you're unlikely to hit the limits any time soon. |
| 20:20 | <&jerith> | It's an open-ended game, though. You get limited closure from finishing a continent, but there's always another one over the horizon. |
| 20:22 | < EvilDarkLord> | AI War is similar in this, I think, though I haven't actually won it yet. |
| 20:22 | <&jerith> | AI War is a series of... well, not "short" games, but start-to-finish games. |
| 20:23 | <&jerith> | AVWW is more an ongoing game with connected episodes. |
| 20:24 | < EvilDarkLord> | Hmm, I see. The difference being the global stuff you collect in the latter? |
| 20:24 | <&jerith> | Yes. |
| 20:25 | <&jerith> | Also, there are a lot of resource unlocks and such that require continent two or three. |
| 20:26 | | * jerith fires up AVWW for a bit. |
| 20:27 | | * jerith realises that stating his intent in IRC doesn't actually launch the game, and goes to do it properly. |
| 20:31 | | * EvilDarkLord buys AVWW on Steam and sets it to download. |
| 20:33 | | * McMartin holds the world ransom for ONE MILLION DOLLARS |
| 20:35 | | * ErikMesoy watches with amusement as some trillionaire saves the world with petty change. |
| 20:36 | | * McMartin shakes fist |
| 20:36 | < ErikMesoy> | Ask for gold next time! ;) |
| 20:36 | <&McMartin> | PORN is the ONLY RELIABLE STORE OF VALUE |
| 20:37 | < ErikMesoy> | Unless the next Savonarola comes along. |
| 20:37 | <&McMartin> | Dude |
| 20:37 | <&McMartin> | That produces massive deflation. |
| 20:38 | | * EvilDarkLord wonders about McMartin's ethanol intake the past several hours. |
| 20:38 | <&McMartin> | Pretty low. |
| 20:39 | < ErikMesoy> | Yes, other people burning their stores causes deflation which nominally benefits the people who don't burn their stores. My point is that Savonarolas have a tendency to burn the people who aren't burning said stores of value. |
| 20:39 | <&McMartin> | The joke was that you were announcing a purchase as if it were to make it happen, a la jerith's mistakes. |
| 20:40 | <&McMartin> | Well, you don't use it as currency |
| 21:10 | < Rhamphoryncus> | So.. to add some pitch and yaw to my camera I just need to learn linear algebra >.> |
| 21:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | EvilDarkLord: getting in on the AVWW discussion - my impressions so far are that it's not very good, but has a lot of potential, and I'll be checking it out again when Arcen releases 2.0 |
| 21:20 | <@ToxicFrog> | The next patch will apparently support texture packs, so that should help with the graphics once people get their teeth into it |
| 21:20 | <@ToxicFrog> | But the biggest problems I have is that the strategic-mode stuff is badly watered down compared to their earlier designs, and the platforming doesn't have enough differentiation in combat or terrain. |
| 21:30 | <&McMartin> | Rhamphoryncus: glRotate and friends are now deprecated? o_O |
| 21:30 | < Rhamphoryncus> | I haven't seen that one mentioned but afaik most are |
| 21:31 | < Rhamphoryncus> | Just throw a matrix at your vertex shader and you're done |
| 21:31 | <&McMartin> | Yes, so, there's a whole bunch of functions that wrap useful matrix transformations. |
| 21:31 | <&McMartin> | Deprecating them would be kind of stupid, though I guess they could move them into GLU. |
| 21:32 | <&McMartin> | gluPerspective is *technically* unnecessary since glFrustum exists, but gluPerspective lets you specify things the way they are *actually intended* |
| 21:32 | <&McMartin> | Likewise gluLookAt |
| 21:33 | < Rhamphoryncus> | Apparently this is reimplementing a lot: http://glm.g-truc.net/ |
| 21:34 | < Rhamphoryncus> | Much of the point of opengl3/4 is strip off cruft like that. Unfortunately it would have been better to have an official set of helper functions |
| 22:02 | < Atreus> | I suppose it must be so it's easier to optimise? |
| 22:02 | < Atreus> | If there's one set of functions there's one set of code paths etc... |
| 22:10 | <&jerith> | ToxicFrog: Lava flats are supposed to be hardcore platforming, and I think those are only on the second continent. |
| 22:18 | < Rhamphoryncus> | Atreus: faster, lighter, simpler, more robust, etc |
| 22:18 | < Rhamphoryncus> | Very solid reasons to make the core the way it is now |
| 22:19 | < Atreus> | Besides, if you want a wrapper there's always an engine... |
| 22:19 | < Atreus> | Rather than risk some eeejit wrapping a wrapper in a wrapper (yo-dawg!) |
| 22:19 | < Rhamphoryncus> | If you were to add a helper lib it shouldn't necessarily match the old APIs. Make it fit in to the new stuff and build on it piecemeal, rather than hooking in to minor internal details |
| 22:19 | < Rhamphoryncus> | heh |
| 22:33 | | ErikMesoy is now known as ErikMesoy|sleep |
| 22:41 | <&McMartin> | Yeah, what I'm saying is, a bunch of things were *never* core |
| 22:41 | <&McMartin> | anything with "glu" in front |
| 22:48 | <&McMartin> | I can see the argument for resisting glTranslate, but at the very most glRotate should be moved to GLU. |
| 22:52 | | Number3 is now known as ShellNinja |
| 23:04 | <@ToxicFrog> | jerith: the thing is, while forests, caves, abandoned ice-age buildings, abandoned suburban buildings, shacks, garages, etc all look different, they all play pretty much identically |
| 23:04 | <@ToxicFrog> | (also, the boss fights are boring as hell) |
| 23:06 | < Atreus> | Seriously. How the fuck are people struggling at first year compsci. |
| 23:06 | <&McMartin> | It should be easy to get hardcoded transformation matrices for rotation about 1,0,0 and 0,1,0 and 0,0,1. |
| 23:06 | | * Atreus :///////s at his peer cohort. |
| 23:06 | <&McMartin> | Atreus: It's a skill. It really is. |
| 23:06 | <&McMartin> | So is mouse operation. |
| 23:06 | < Atreus> | There's someone who's failing to grasp Java Serialisation. |
| 23:06 | <&McMartin> | There are people who actually claim it's a talent |
| 23:06 | <&McMartin> | Dude |
| 23:06 | <&McMartin> | First year CS |
| 23:07 | <&McMartin> | A sizable fraction of students actually will fail to grasp variable assignment. |
| 23:07 | < Atreus> | It's one of the best documented features. |
| 23:07 | < Atreus> | Even before you add the material the university produced on it. |
| 23:07 | < Atreus> | I just... I don't know how. |
| 23:07 | < Atreus> | I grasped variable assignment before I knew fundamental algebra. |
| 23:07 | <&McMartin> | That is because you have had the ability to model computation mentally for, at a guess, at least a decade. |
| 23:08 | <&McMartin> | It doesn't appear to be a universal |
| 23:08 | <&McMartin> | I don't understand how those people can do even basic arithmetic |
| 23:08 | | * Atreus sighs. |
| 23:08 | <&McMartin> | But it's clearly the case - you can not be able to model a computation and still not be innumerate. |
| 23:08 | < Atreus> | I'm not even complaining about people not doing things the right way* |
| 23:08 | <&McMartin> | Yeah, I know |
| 23:08 | < Namegduf> | I can't imagine being a person who cannot take operations A and B and build some given end action out of them. |
| 23:08 | < Atreus> | Just... not being able to do things at all. |
| 23:08 | <&McMartin> | Namegduf: I also can't imagine being illiterate |
| 23:09 | <&McMartin> | Or dyslexic |
| 23:09 | < Namegduf> | I can imagine being illiterate. |
| 23:09 | < Namegduf> | I mean, it'd be difficult as hell. |
| 23:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | I'm reminded of that old "double bell curve in CS" study. I wonder if they ever followed up on it. |
| 23:10 | <&McMartin> | ToxicFrog: I think we're thinking of the same study |
| 23:10 | <&McMartin> | IIRC, giving someone some pseudocode and asking "what would this do?" was the best distinguisher of which curve you were on. |
| 23:10 | <&McMartin> | And it didn't correlate with being *right* |
| 23:10 | <&McMartin> | It correlated with "there is evidence that you have *an* idea of what it means for something to do something" |
| 23:11 | <&McMartin> | That phrasing is stolen from my own first-year CS prof >_> |
| 23:11 | < Namegduf> | They gave out a survey based on that study during my first year at university. |
| 23:11 | <&McMartin> | Where the code-in-pen-on-paper-for-a-test grading scale was: |
| 23:11 | < Namegduf> | I recognised it. |
| 23:11 | <&McMartin> | 5: Correct |
| 23:11 | <&McMartin> | 3-4: Has the idea |
| 23:11 | <&McMartin> | 1-2: Has an idea |
| 23:11 | <&McMartin> | 0: Other |
| 23:11 | < Namegduf> | I have met people who are clearly Other. |
| 23:11 | < Atreus> | TBH the question should have a disqualifying primer. |
| 23:11 | < Atreus> | "Have you ever programmed before" |
| 23:12 | <&McMartin> | Nope |
| 23:12 | <&McMartin> | You have to start *somewhere* |
| 23:12 | < Atreus> | Yes. |
| 23:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | Atreus: the study in question was done on non-programmers, and then re-administered after they'd done a month of intro CS |
| 23:12 | <&McMartin> | Also, you can write code for years and still not get it. |
| 23:12 | < Atreus> | But I mean you aren't interested in what people like me answer. |
| 23:12 | < Namegduf> | s/write/copy and paste/ |
| 23:12 | < Atreus> | ToxicFrog: Some of the people (enough to scew results) are self-taught programmers before doing CS? |
| 23:12 | < Atreus> | You're not interested in their answer. |
| 23:13 | <&McMartin> | Namegduf: Nah, if they did that it'd be better code >_> |
| 23:13 | < Namegduf> | It wouldn't screw results, if I recall correctly. |
| 23:13 | < Atreus> | You're interested in people who're approaching it tabula rasa. |
| 23:13 | <&McMartin> | It's worth noting that this particular first-year CS class used SICP |
| 23:13 | <&McMartin> | It was taught, therefore, in Scheme. |
| 23:13 | < Atreus> | Well, if you had the filtering question you'd know if it was statistically significant! |
| 23:13 | < Namegduf> | You would? |
| 23:13 | <&McMartin> | This was very good at weeding out the coders that didn't have a clue. |
| 23:13 | < Atreus> | You'd have statistics to show! |
| 23:13 | <&McMartin> | And a lot of them were |
| 23:13 | < Namegduf> | You'd have statistics anyway. |
| 23:13 | <&McMartin> | And they universally thought they were the hottest of shit |
| 23:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | Atreus: you should read the paper |
| 23:13 | < Namegduf> | Yes. |
| 23:14 | < Atreus> | Probably. |
| 23:14 | < Atreus> | I've only read the blog posts about the paper. |
| 23:14 | <&McMartin> | We should find the paper. I don't have a link handy |
| 23:14 | <@ToxicFrog> | This is the draft of the original: http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf |
| 23:14 | < Namegduf> | I'm pretty sure the point was about improvement. |
| 23:14 | < Atreus> | It didn't really seem like my interests. |
| 23:14 | < Namegduf> | In answers. |
| 23:14 | < Namegduf> | Not about absolute answers. |
| 23:14 | < Atreus> | I guess so. |
| 23:14 | < Namegduf> | If you pass first time you aren't interesting for that particular conclusion anyway. |
| 23:15 | < Namegduf> | And they don't need another filter for you. |
| 23:15 | < Namegduf> | I believe the interesting statistic was that a very small number of people who had completely no idea originally developed a good idea later? I don't remember precisely. |
| 23:15 | < Atreus> | Although it doesn't help that everyone gets tripped up by the assignment/comparison ambiguity :) |
| 23:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | Atreus: in short, what they found out was that you could easily divide the people taking the test into two populations - those who formed a consistent mental model of what things like '=' mean - even if it's a totally incorrect one - and those who don't. |
| 23:16 | <&McMartin> | Atreus: That's one reason "is the answer *right*" isn't the distinguisher, yes |
| 23:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | Re-administering the test after some education, there was basically no movement between the groups. |
| 23:16 | <@ToxicFrog> | People in the "consistent" group were now much more likely to have a correct mental model as well as a consistent one. |
| 23:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | People in the "inconsistent" group were still hopelessly lost after a month of instruction. |
| 23:17 | <@ToxicFrog> | Most of the latter group failed; most of the former group passed. |
| 23:17 | <~Vornicus> | Atreus: that some major languages still actually use the same operator symbol for assignment and equality comparison doesn't help |
| 23:18 | <&McMartin> | From an instructional standpoint, the solution is in one sense "have weeder classes, because there aren't enough resources even to teach all the people in the 'consistent' group" |
| 23:18 | < Atreus> | I know my CS dept. has a policy that you have to have an average of 50% between the two first year software development modules to pass into the second year of a 'programming degree' |
| 23:18 | < Atreus> | Which I think is based on a similar idea. |
| 23:18 | | * McMartin nods |
| 23:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | Namegduf: the interesting statistic is that people taking the test - independent of whether they had prior programming experience or not - either immediately came up with a consistent mental model for how things work, or failed to do so and pretty much guessed randomly. |
| 23:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | And that this didn't change even after application of instruction. |
| 23:19 | <&McMartin> | Which implies it's something closer to dyslexia than illiteracy. |
| 23:19 | < Namegduf> | ToxicFrog: Thanks. |
| 23:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | Most of the people who formed a consistent model formed a wrong one - not surprising, since no prior explanation was given and most if not all of them had no programming knowledge - but they applied their wrong model consistently across questions. |
| 23:19 | < Atreus> | Surely though this ability to form a consistent model would crop up before they reached software engineering. |
| 23:20 | <&McMartin> | ... where would you expect it to do so? |
| 23:20 | <&McMartin> | Lots of people aren't engineers or mechanics, after all |
| 23:20 | < Atreus> | About the age you start to play with legos? |
| 23:20 | <@ToxicFrog> | And the thing is, the ones who didn't, didn't develop a consistent model, even after taking the course - the ones who did generally replaced their initial "wrong" model with a "right" (or at least "less wrong") one, but the people who started out guessing just kept guessing. |
| 23:20 | <&McMartin> | "Lots of people aren't engineers or mechanics, after all" |
| 23:21 | < Atreus> | I mean. Isn't forming a model of inuitive understanding of reality a major part of child's play? |
| 23:21 | < Atreus> | Err |
| 23:21 | <&McMartin> | Sure, but that's not what this is. |
| 23:21 | < Atreus> | Badly phrased |
| 23:21 | < Namegduf> | Hmm. |
| 23:21 | < Namegduf> | Yeah, that's the thing. I can't imagine not being able to *model* the world. |
| 23:21 | <&McMartin> | There are clearly some ways of building such a model that *don't* map to von Neumann machines in any way. |
| 23:22 | < Namegduf> | I guess so. |
| 23:22 | <&McMartin> | Alternately, a sizable chunk of humanity isn't sentient, a position for which there is admittedly a great deal of evidence~ |
| 23:22 | < Namegduf> | XD |
| 23:22 | <~Vornicus> | speaking of "lots of people aren't engineers or mechanics" I still am unsure why calculus is considered such a major component of non-engineer math education |
| 23:22 | < Atreus> | I'm just saying wouldn't this dysfunction prevent people from understanding other machines and aparatus. |
| 23:22 | <&McMartin> | Atreus: Well, yes |
| 23:22 | < Atreus> | And even if you aren't a mechanic or an engineer... |
| 23:22 | | * Vornicus says this as a mathematician. |
| 23:22 | < Atreus> | You still encounter them. >.> |
| 23:23 | <&McMartin> | Are you, hm, familiar with the Blinking Twelve Problem. |
| 23:23 | < Atreus> | No. |
| 23:23 | <&McMartin> | There are secretly two. |
| 23:23 | | Atreus is now known as Tarinaky |
| 23:23 | <&McMartin> | But in its basic form "Lots of people just have their clocks blinking twelve all the time on their VCRs because they were never able to work out how to set the time" |
| 23:23 | <&McMartin> | This was, of course, in the days before NTP, or DVDs. |
| 23:23 | < Tarinaky> | Oh! That. |
| 23:23 | < Tarinaky> | xD |
| 23:23 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: I have on occasion found calculus to be useful in daily life |
| 23:24 | <@ToxicFrog> | Although I can't offhand remember where~ |
| 23:24 | <&McMartin> | There are secretly two becuase (a) yes, there are lots of people who are mechnaically and electrically disinclined, or hopeless with machines or building stuff for reasons besides clumsiness |
| 23:24 | <~Vornicus> | TF: sure, I have too. For one thing I trolled my brother with the lambert w function yesterday~ |
| 23:24 | < Tarinaky> | McMartin: I've only observed that in people showing (symptoms of) either stress or dementia. |
| 23:24 | <&McMartin> | but (b) seriously, VCR UIs were utter shit and completely nondiscoverable and the manuals were translated from Japanese to English by someone who spoke only Swahili |
| 23:25 | <~Vornicus> | I still wonder why your typical TV remote now contains an average of 50 buttons |
| 23:25 | <~Vornicus> | I had a DVD remote once that had two numpads. |
| 23:25 | <&McMartin> | Because they used to have six and you had to do things with combo strings, fighting game style |
| 23:25 | < Tarinaky> | Well, our house has all the vcrs set to stupid times now, but that's because the crap digiboxes you need generate EMI that fucks with the VCRs. |
| 23:25 | <&McMartin> | My favorite standard feature being "you could only configure timed record while the VCR was nominally powered off" |
| 23:26 | | * Eri looks at his stereo |
| 23:26 | < Eri> | "You can only set the time when the stereo is powered off" |
| 23:26 | < Tarinaky> | That and abject laziness given how many clocks the average TV has now. |
| 23:26 | < Tarinaky> | (1 built in to the TV, 1 on the skybox, 1 on the VCR, 1 on the XBox...) |
| 23:27 | <&McMartin> | NTP is the answer >_> |
| 23:28 | <@ToxicFrog> | Oh hey: http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/ |
| 23:28 | <&McMartin> | woo |
| 23:28 | <&McMartin> | Anyawy |
| 23:28 | <&McMartin> | It turns out that it's also possible to graduate with a CS degree and have years of experience and *still* have no idea how to program in any remotely acceptable way |
| 23:29 | <&McMartin> | This is why job interviews always involve portfolios or live coding tests. |
| 23:29 | <&McMartin> | At any rate, though: |
| 23:29 | <&McMartin> | "We now report that after six experiments, involving more than 500 students at six institutions in three countries, the predictive effect of our test has failed to live up to that early promise." |
| 23:30 | <&McMartin> | But it looks like they restrengthen it later, hm |
| 23:30 | <&McMartin> | OK, will need to read this beyond abstracts later. |
| 23:31 | < Tarinaky> | In fairness, it's possible to graduate from any degree scheme and have years of experience and still be utter shit. |
| 23:32 | < Eri> | Hah, the people at my university are evidence of this |
| 23:32 | < Tarinaky> | The only thing 'special' about Comp Sci is that it beggers belief that it's not special. |
| 23:32 | <&McMartin> | It's a branch of Mathematics, imo |
| 23:33 | <&McMartin> | also, re: Calculus: It's got a mystique that, for some reason, Stat lacks. |
| 23:33 | <&McMartin> | In the US. |
| 23:33 | <&McMartin> | Everywhere *but* the US, Calculus is treated as a prereq for teaching basic kinematics. |
| 23:33 | <&McMartin> | The US appears to be reasonably unique in its focus on algebraic kinematics. |
| 23:33 | < Eri> | mystique? I think calculus should be taught sooner in the curriculum |
| 23:33 | <&McMartin> | Vorn's point is that Calculus is almost entirely useless, compared to algebra or stat. |
| 23:33 | < Eri> | It's the natural extension of multiplication and division |
| 23:33 | < Tarinaky> | It's still possible to pass maths without a deep understanding of the subject beyond memorising a few classes of problems that are identical to the exam paper. |
| 23:34 | < Tarinaky> | >.> |
| 23:34 | < Tarinaky> | Definately at first year anyway. |
| 23:34 | < Eri> | Stat is useful? Taught at the level I've recieved, that's news to me |
| 23:34 | < Tarinaky> | That's like... my entire exam strategy! |
| 23:34 | <&McMartin> | Tarinaky: It turns out this was one reason Japanese schoolchildren consistently outperformed American students >_> |
| 23:35 | <&McMartin> | "JAPANESE THIRD GRADERS CAN SOLVE THIS TEST IN 30 MINUTES" |
| 23:35 | <&McMartin> | "Oh hey, we didn't learn to solve problems like this until 11th grade" |
| 23:35 | <&McMartin> | "... oh hey, these are all the same problem, just phrased in different ways and sometimes multiplied by a constant factor" |
| 23:36 | | * TheWatcher eyes $coworker, who is adamant she needs to be using `width: something` because she wants to "increase the width of the [table cell] to be slightly greater than its'[sic] contents", facepalms |
| 23:37 | <&McMartin> | ... OK, I've forgotten. Is that 'margin' or 'padding'? |
| 23:37 | < Tarinaky> | As I understand it though there are other problems in the American system. |
| 23:37 | < Namegduf> | Introduce her to predictionbook.com |
| 23:37 | < Namegduf> | McMartin: padding, as worded, both probably work. |
| 23:38 | < Namegduf> | padding makes it actually wider, margin makes the space reserved for it on the page wider without making it actually wider. |
| 23:38 | <&McMartin> | Tarinaky: The American system has wildly different priorities from the British-based system and the mappings of skill levels are tenuous at best. |
| 23:38 | < Namegduf> | The different is noticable with backgrounds or borders. |
| 23:38 | <&McMartin> | IIRC, the American system looks more like old German systems or something. |
| 23:38 | <&McMartin> | Also, IIRC, aptitude tests show it all smears out by age 25 anyway -_- |
| 23:39 | < Tarinaky> | Well the 'British system'/National Curriculum was only introduced in the 70s iirc. |
| 23:39 | < Tarinaky> | And there are certainly some accusations every year about certain papers on certain boards being poor. |
| 23:39 | <&McMartin> | Yeah, that's the equivalent of curriculum fights at the state level in the US. |
| 23:40 | | * TheWatcher demonstrates to her, with Simple Examples For The Hard Of Thinking why she is bloody wrong. |
| 23:40 | <&McMartin> | Until GWB we didn't *have* a federal-level curriculum in any real sense |
| 23:40 | <&McMartin> | (Though the one that coutns is still the elite universities' application requirements) |
| 23:40 | < Eri> | I thought the british curriculum was particularly affected by grade inflation, due to A-level courses? |
| 23:40 | < Tarinaky> | Primarily because it's difficult to do Maths/Science papers that aren't "identical questions, different coefficients" without making them abjectly harder than an English paper. |
| 23:40 | <&jerith> | "padding" is on the inside of the cell, "margin" is on the outside of the cell. Except in browsers with pseudoprime version numbers, or on a Thursday, or if Larry Ellison has measured his yacht recently. |
| 23:40 | < Tarinaky> | Eri: There's no Grade inflation. |
| 23:41 | < Tarinaky> | Grade inflation is when you award higher grades to students who haven't achieved them. |
| 23:41 | <&McMartin> | Tarinaky: Yeah, that's a problem in the US too and the solution has just been to make engineering more prestigious... |
| 23:41 | < Namegduf> | Grade inflation is any mechanism which causes average grade to rise over time. |
| 23:41 | < Eri> | Yeah. I thought that was what was going on, in a sense. |
| 23:41 | < Namegduf> | The British system suffers from it *awfully*. |
| 23:41 | < Tarinaky> | The students actually perform slightly better year on year due to - you know... teachers and methods iteratively improving over time? |
| 23:41 | < Eri> | Except, rather than giving better marks, they're just lowering the bar |
| 23:41 | <&McMartin> | ... and, as it turned out, you can make engineers jealous by giving first-year English majors the Canterbury tales |
| 23:41 | < Tarinaky> | The bar isn't lowering. |
| 23:41 | <@TheWatcher> | Tarinaky: .... aahahahahahahhaha |
| 23:41 | < Namegduf> | Tarinaky: I see you've never tried any really old past papers. |
| 23:42 | <@TheWatcher> | AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA |
| 23:42 | < Namegduf> | Tarinaky: Yeah, the bar really really is. |
| 23:42 | <@TheWatcher> | Try teaching them |
| 23:42 | <@TheWatcher> | Seriously |
| 23:42 | <&McMartin> | That's a "kids these days" argument, really~ |
| 23:42 | <@TheWatcher> | The stuff we get coming in at UG level? |
| 23:42 | <&McMartin> | That said |
| 23:42 | < Tarinaky> | When I did my A-levels (5 years ago?) and I did an older paper they weren't any harder |
| 23:42 | < Namegduf> | How "older"? |
| 23:42 | < Tarinaky> | The 'difficult' bits were where the material was just -different-. |
| 23:42 | <&McMartin> | UGs in the US are almost universally graded relative to other students that took the same questions. |
| 23:43 | < Namegduf> | When I was in HS, nine year old papers were much easier than three/two year papers. |
| 23:43 | <@TheWatcher> | We have demonstrably, probable declines in ability over the last 10 years |
| 23:43 | < Tarinaky> | ie: unfamiliar. |
| 23:43 | < Namegduf> | No, not unfamiliar. |
| 23:43 | < Namegduf> | I know the difference. |
| 23:43 | < Namegduf> | There were more more difficult questions. |
| 23:43 | < Tarinaky> | TheWatcher: Isn't that because universities are accepting more students? |
| 23:43 | <&McMartin> | TheWatcher: Heh. We had the reverse in Physics, to the point that they reworke the curves |
| 23:43 | <&McMartin> | In my E&M class |
| 23:43 | <@TheWatcher> | s/probable/provable/ |
| 23:44 | <&McMartin> | Basically, after the midterm, he came in and said "the curve was a ramp, with a spike at 100%. The department is *sure* this test is harder than the ones we've been giving. Next time you're *so going to get it*" |
| 23:44 | <@TheWatcher> | Tarinaky: no, intake in at least the school I work for is mostly consistent over that period |
| 23:44 | <&McMartin> | Next test was indeed much harder, got a proper bell curve |
| 23:44 | <&McMartin> | But they did "inflate" the grades that year, but it was because they thought they had a better batch that year |
| 23:45 | < Tarinaky> | TheWatcher: University intake of all universities is consistently larger year on year |
| 23:45 | <@TheWatcher> | We have had to introduce remedial courses for basic learning skills, reduced the maths requirements, and other stuff because the students couldn't hack it |
| 23:45 | < Tarinaky> | If they're not coming from your school then they're coming from somewhere else. |
| 23:45 | < Namegduf> | More precisely, the older paper seemed to me to have way more "difficult to answer" gotcha questions. |
| 23:45 | < Tarinaky> | There are still more students in this year than the year before than the year before that. |
| 23:45 | < Namegduf> | I had more recent papers and they were much closer in format to the current one. |
| 23:46 | <&McMartin> | Note that at this level the US has a rather unique problem, unrelated to its "don't specialize until the last possible moment" focus that is its primary difference from the UK |
| 23:46 | <@TheWatcher> | Tarinaky: no, the intake over the last 10 years to my school (I don't give a damn about the rest of the uni, I'm taling my school) has been about the same - with maybe a 20 or 30 student variation - for a decade |
| 23:46 | <&McMartin> | Which is to say, its difference in quality of secondary and tertiary education is gigantic |
| 23:46 | < Namegduf> | Oh, hey. |
| 23:47 | < Namegduf> | I found a news article from Sunday. |
| 23:47 | < Namegduf> | "Ofqual chief says year-on-year grade inflation 'impossible to justify' and outlines plans to make some subjects compulsory" |
| 23:47 | < Namegduf> | http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/apr/29/exams-a-level-reforms-grade-infl ation |
| 23:47 | <@TheWatcher> | We don't have /room/ for more. |
| 23:47 | <&McMartin> | Yeah, you have to rebalance |
| 23:47 | <&McMartin> | You want the whole curve to appear on the results |
| 23:47 | < Tarinaky> | Well. Maybe I'm just defencive about the fact I only got 2 Bs and a C at A-Level then >.> |
| 23:47 | < Tarinaky> | *defensive |
| 23:48 | <&McMartin> | Of course, we had this one prof |
| 23:48 | <@TheWatcher> | We run interviews to select students, because our application rate is higher than our capacity. And we still have a decline in essential numeracy, literacy, and learning skills |
| 23:48 | <&McMartin> | I have no idea how he managed it |
| 23:48 | <&McMartin> | But he nominally did an absolute scale |
| 23:48 | <&McMartin> | And when the midterm came back - on objective material mind you, no essay questions or anything... |
| 23:48 | <&McMartin> | Mean of 50%, Range of 97%. |
| 23:48 | <@TheWatcher> | ... |
| 23:49 | < Tarinaky> | Impressive. |
| 23:49 | <&McMartin> | To this day, no idea how he did that |
| 23:49 | <&McMartin> | And while that was unusually good, that *kind* of thing was apparently pretty routine |
| 23:50 | <&McMartin> | (Since this apparently varies by major and school: the expectation in science and CS classes was a mean around 50%.) |
| 23:50 | | himi [fow035@Nightstar-5d05bada.internode.on.net] has quit [Ping timeout: 121 seconds] |
| 23:52 | < Tarinaky> | "Haven't done it yet, but I'm going to have to explain to my boss why, since my job involves a good deal of computer programming, telling me that I "spend too much time on the computer" at my performance review is stupid." |
| 23:52 | < Tarinaky> | xD |
| 23:53 | <@TheWatcher> | ... wat |
| 23:53 | < Tarinaky> | Reddit. |
| 23:53 | <&McMartin> | fizba wizh |
| 23:53 | <&jerith> | So, that "new" PHP CGI vuln. http://help.station.sony.com/cgi-bin/soe.cfg/php/enduser/live.php?-s |
| 23:53 | <@Tamber> | ...awesome. |
| 23:54 | <@TheWatcher> | Ah, sony. |
| 23:54 | <@Tamber> | Somehow, that doesn't surprise me~ |
| 23:54 | <&jerith> | http://ompldr.org/vZGxxaQ <-- There's the vuln. |
| 23:55 | < Namegduf> | "http://localhost/index.php?-s" |
| 23:55 | < Namegduf> | He's an idiot. |
| 23:56 | < Namegduf> | To be less harsh, he "forgot" that. |
| 23:57 | <&jerith> | Namegduf: They just forgot that a CGI binary should do *only* CGI. |
| 23:57 | < Namegduf> | I guess rereading he may have just worded it poorly. |
| 23:57 | < Namegduf> | jerith: PHP people are known to be morons. |
| 23:58 | < Namegduf> | jerith: I mean, first there was the basic language and then there was every change they made to it. |
| 23:58 | <&jerith> | Namegduf: I know this. |
| 23:58 | <&jerith> | PHP /started/ as a plain CGI-only thing. |
| 23:58 | <@ToxicFrog> | ahahahaha what |
| 23:58 | < Namegduf> | "There was a serious vulnerability in certain CGI-based PHP setups that has gone unnoticed for at least 8 years." |
| 23:58 | <&jerith> | But then some bright spark decided "I can call this on the command line as well!" and added some params. |
| 23:59 | <&jerith> | But really. If you're still using CGI in the 21st century, you deserve whatever you get. |
| --- Log closed Fri May 04 00:00:22 2012 |